Service Dog wrote: ↑
Now I have a righteous excuse to yell 'fuck you' at people wearing Soul Cycle leggings & t-shirts.

I believe you always did.

Hey, have you seen UnReal? It's a TV show about a reality TV show (basically, The Bachelor by another name.) A lot of the behind-the-scenes craziness my sister described from her Hollywood days, but I imagine very similar to the craziness you encounter. UnReal is funny and dark at the same time, plumbs the depths of bent human nature, and is infinitely engrossing.

"We acknowledged that becoming a parent was a life-changing experience that required significant adaptation, but taking care of children was a role that was stereotypically associated with women," the body added in its ruling.

Using that justification wouldn't any shot of a woman, sans man, caring for a child now be in the Bad Things category?

In a web page begging for money, Skepticon gave an run down of how deep in debt they are, both for their conference (which is going on right now) and for their legal fees for that law suit by Carrier. Archived link below, but here the summary of their legal situation:

It's unclear if they paid for other legal bills with funds they raised in the past, but at least now, they are net deficit of nearly $28K, and they are expecting another bill to arrive shortly to add to that deficit.

The first part of the post outlines the finances of the conference. The TL;DR version: total conference cost estimated at a bit over $30K, but still short almost $11K.

The Guardian Newspaper Has Lost Two Trans Employees Over Its Reporting On Trans Issues
“It suddenly became real,” one trans staff member told BuzzFeed News. “I’m entering this building with people who are denying my humanity.”

A transgender employee of The Guardian – which once called itself the “world’s leading liberal voice” – has resigned accusing the newspaper in an email to staff of being “an incredibly transphobic organisation”.

In a cutting resignation letter sent last month, the employee said the paper “fundamentally not only stands against my own values but also against what I am”. A second staff member resigned weeks later, also citing the “harm” they say the newspaper is doing to trans people.

Following the leak of the email to BuzzFeed News, the trans employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she felt complicit in the newspaper’s "transphobic" reporting by continuing to work there, and revealed the damaging effect the Guardian’s coverage of transgender people has had on her wellbeing. This included fear of using the women’s toilet at work.

Such editorial lines, she said, are a “blind spot” for the largely progressive publication which last month published a long read criticising other news outlets for their stigmatizing coverage of refugees, another marginalised group.

The former employee also said colleagues had made transphobic remarks to her.

Her resignation marks a flashpoint in what multiple sources at the Guardian have described to BuzzFeed News as a deepening internal war over the rights of transgender people – and how the organisation reports on them. Staff members across several departments accused the paper of “institutional transphobia”, peddling transphobic tropes, and allowing a bitter schism to develop between pro- and anti-trans journalists.

Shortly after, during two separate incidents at informal drinks with colleagues, one member of staff who had previously been Victoria’s friend at work defended the article, she said, and began citing trans women in sports as a reason to attack trans rights. Another colleague, she said, “poked fun” at her, asked if she was trans, and told her, “If you went to prison I’m not sure which prison you should go to.”

The Guardian Newspaper Has Lost Two Trans Employees Over Its Reporting On Trans Issues
“It suddenly became real,” one trans staff member told BuzzFeed News. “I’m entering this building with people who are denying my humanity.”

A transgender employee of The Guardian – which once called itself the “world’s leading liberal voice” – has resigned accusing the newspaper in an email to staff of being “an incredibly transphobic organisation”.

In a cutting resignation letter sent last month, the employee said the paper “fundamentally not only stands against my own values but also against what I am”. A second staff member resigned weeks later, also citing the “harm” they say the newspaper is doing to trans people.

Following the leak of the email to BuzzFeed News, the trans employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she felt complicit in the newspaper’s "transphobic" reporting by continuing to work there, and revealed the damaging effect the Guardian’s coverage of transgender people has had on her wellbeing. This included fear of using the women’s toilet at work.

Such editorial lines, she said, are a “blind spot” for the largely progressive publication which last month published a long read criticising other news outlets for their stigmatizing coverage of refugees, another marginalised group.

The former employee also said colleagues had made transphobic remarks to her.

Her resignation marks a flashpoint in what multiple sources at the Guardian have described to BuzzFeed News as a deepening internal war over the rights of transgender people – and how the organisation reports on them. Staff members across several departments accused the paper of “institutional transphobia”, peddling transphobic tropes, and allowing a bitter schism to develop between pro- and anti-trans journalists.

Shortly after, during two separate incidents at informal drinks with colleagues, one member of staff who had previously been Victoria’s friend at work defended the article, she said, and began citing trans women in sports as a reason to attack trans rights. Another colleague, she said, “poked fun” at her, asked if she was trans, and told her, “If you went to prison I’m not sure which prison you should go to.”

Jeremiah Button’s jury trial in Portage County was just two weeks away when he disappeared in early 2016. Charged with first degree child sexual assault and possession of child pornography, Button had been out on a $25,000 cash bond for about a year and a half when he vanished.

That was when he built the bunker, he would later tell deputies with the Marathon County Sheriff’s Office. Carved into an embankment near the Ice Age Trail on state land in the township of Ringle and protected from sight by thickened underbrush that he himself had helped create, Button would escape detection from law enforcement for almost three and a half years until a concerned hunter called police last Friday, Aug. 9.

So it's finally happened in real life. A person I unfortunately just met, with clear socialisation problems, is getting others to refer to them as "they". I'd give a clear pronoun myself, but I honestly can't tell.

Keating wrote: ↑
So it's finally happened in real life. A person I unfortunately just met, with clear socialisation problems, is getting others to refer to them as "they". I'd give a clear pronoun myself, but I honestly can't tell.

What's wrong with "mate"? It is the perfect non gender specific catch all.

Keating wrote: ↑
So it's finally happened in real life. A person I unfortunately just met, with clear socialisation problems, is getting others to refer to them as "they". I'd give a clear pronoun myself, but I honestly can't tell.

What pronoun does the "they" use to refer to theyselves? "We"?

According to me, anyone who demands special pronouns is at-least required to jump thru their own hoop & consistently refer to themselves soley using their own rules.

SM1957 wrote: ↑
Greta Thunberg is making an environmental point by sailing across the Atlantic, not flying - to save CO2 emissions,

Five people are flying across to New York so they can sail the boat back.

Once upon a time, if you told me about millions of adults joining a thirteen-year-old retard's crusade to save the planet from destruction, I'd swear you were talking about a Kurt Vonnegut novel.

To take an autistic teenager with an eating disorder and other mental health issues and tell her the world is going to end and it's up to her to save it rather meets my definition of child abuse.

She quite categorically states that she doesn't believe that the world is going to end. She also states that she was pissed off by the apparent inaction by leaders around climate change, so set up her one day a week protest. She did not expect to go viral (so it wasn't a Machiavellian plot by her parents to profit).

Youth see things in black and white. Autistic youth even more so.

Good on her. I wouldn't have had that gumption or composure at that age.

I agree. You couldn't get away with throwing your cigarette butts on the ground like that any more.

It's funny, the guy seems like a decent one hit wonder, and they obviously threw this video together. But you think they would have considered a stand-in actor? He's 33 years old in this, singing to a teen girl, looks like Harvey Keitel with long hair and serial killer eyes. Today this would be career suicide.

I agree. You couldn't get away with throwing your cigarette butts on the ground like that any more.

It's funny, the guy seems like a decent one hit wonder, and they obviously threw this video together. But you think they would have considered a stand-in actor? He's 33 years old in this, singing to a teen girl, looks like Harvey Keitel with long hair and serial killer eyes. Today this would be career suicide.

On my small low res tablet screen thought that was a woman in the video thumbnail. If he calls themselves she/xir will that be alright?

KiwiInOz wrote: ↑
She quite categorically states that she doesn't believe that the world is going to end. She also states that she was pissed off by the apparent inaction by leaders around climate change, so set up her one day a week protest. She did not expect to go viral (so it wasn't a Machiavellian plot by her parents to profit).

Youth see things in black and white. Autistic youth even more so.

Good on her. I wouldn't have had that gumption or composure at that age.

In a recent speech, she states climate change will "most likely lead to the end of civilization as we know it." Granted, "as we know it" is the weasliest of weasel words, but this is basically in the same ball park as "the world is going to end", another weasel phrase.

Her shtick is recounting how she was taught climate change is an existential crisis, but no one acts like this is the case, and this dooms her future. You are correct that autistes are particularly prone to see things in black and white, but an even more defining characteristic is that they have difficulty seeing beyond the literal, or that people frequently say things that are not literally what they actually believe. Yes, almost no one behaves like we're in the onset of an existential crisis even while, in certain sets, there's an almost religious zeal competition to describe the consequences of climate change as apocalyptically as possible. The obvious explanation is people say it, but don't actually believe it, and are using hyperbolic scare mongering for political purpose. But in her damaged brain, it must mean people are incredibly short sighted and stupid and need to be woken up.

I think you are also correct that neither her nor her parents had her rise in stature planned out. Rather climate activist PR thought she would be a useful propaganda tool. But if they want to make a mentally ill Swedish adolescent the face of climate change alarmism, more power to them.

Phil_Giordana_FCD wrote: ↑
Whatever anyone may think about climate change, children do not have the experience or cynicism needed to deal with such politically charged subjects.

She can be 100% right, but it still won't work on a more astute population. You know, the voting type...

I think the "climate crisis" people are mistaking the purpose of protests. In a democracy it is a way to raise awareness of an issue among voters so that the change can come through the ballot box. It seems that some of these people think the purpose of protest is to bypass democracy and get their agenda implemented directly. Even if they are right about what needs to be done, a democracy does not work that way.

Phil_Giordana_FCD wrote: ↑
Whatever anyone may think about climate change, children do not have the experience or cynicism needed to deal with such politically charged subjects.

She can be 100% right, but it still won't work on a more astute population. You know, the voting type...

I think the "climate crisis" people are mistaking the purpose of protests. In a democracy it is a way to raise awareness of an issue among voters so that the change can come through the ballot box. It seems that some of these people think the purpose of protest is to bypass democracy and get their agenda implemented directly. Even if they are right about what needs to be done, a democracy does not work that way.

I think one should be careful to differentiate between the political ideologues whose stance on climate is informed by their anti-conservative views and those people who have an understanding of the issue and genuinely want to inform.
Regarding progressive entitlement, in this video Robin Aitken explains the progressive mindset exemplified by the BBC. He thinks that the modern Left regard political history as moving inexorably toward their preferred destination and it is their moral right to ensure that it happens regardless of anyone else's opinion. I think he is absolutely right and it explains the deranged response to Trump, Brexit, "populism" and anti-EU sentiment. The prog Left seem genuinely incensed at the derailing of their righteous choo choo and they can't quite believe that it isn't Nazis and racist "gammons" doing it.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aucDmK5E4bU

ThreeFlangedJavis wrote: ↑
I think one should be careful to differentiate between the political ideologues whose stance on climate is informed by their anti-conservative views and those people who have an understanding of the issue and genuinely want to inform.
Regarding progressive entitlement, in this video Robin Aitken explains the progressive mindset exemplified by the BBC. He thinks that the modern Left regard political history as moving inexorably toward their preferred destination and it is their moral right to ensure that it happens regardless of anyone else's opinion. I think he is absolutely right and it explains the deranged response to Trump, Brexit, "populism" and anti-EU sentiment. The prog Left seem genuinely incensed at the derailing of their righteous choo choo and they can't quite believe that it isn't Nazis and racist "gammons" doing it.

I agree. On the other side, conservatives, or at least conservative intellectuals, tend to take the complementary view that they are the rearguard in a war they're destined to lose, as in William F Buckley's famous declaration that the role of a conservative is to "stand athwart history, yelling stop". I think one reason Trump is so popular among the GOP rank and file is that, instead of being gloomily defensive temperamentally, he takes it to the other side.

It seems to take place in one of those thin places where counter-factuals are leaking in. For example - I was not previously aware of live televised public executions occurring in the UK in the 1960s. But then again 'The Avengers' and 'The Prisoner' did set precedent for bringing some of the eccentricities of British culture to TV.

Keating wrote: ↑
So it's finally happened in real life. A person I unfortunately just met, with clear socialisation problems, is getting others to refer to them as "they". I'd give a clear pronoun myself, but I honestly can't tell.

What pronoun does the "they" use to refer to theyselves? "We"?

According to me, anyone who demands special pronouns is at-least required to jump thru their own hoop & consistently refer to themselves soley using their own rules.

I haven't actually talked to them yet. It was a group activity, where we only did name introductions. They then had a breakdown about half an hour into the activity and left. Someone asked the instructor if they were okay during a break, and got corrected on their pronoun use and I happened to by nearby that I could overhear the conversation. I can probably get away with never having to talk or refer to them in any way. Although, I'm already using "they" here. Mostly because I'm unsure. I'd guess a male with long hair.

I used to, also. I bought the Left’s argument that life without parole is a worse punishment than execution. But, as usual, they lied. They really didn’t want to lock them up forever, they wanted to let them go:https://www.newyorkupstate.com/news/201 ... _york.html
That’s just from a four month period in 2016 in NY State.

And you're entitled to that opinion. (I thought that way once, too.) But the SJWs at WEIT consistently strawman the pro death penalty argument, while excoriating and slandering any who support it. Also, forced to venture outside their ideological groupthink bubble for the first time, they are shockingly bad at defending their theses.

mordacious1 wrote: ↑
I used to, also. I bought the Left’s argument that life without parole is a worse punishment than execution. But, as usual, they lied. They really didn’t want to lock them up forever, they wanted to let them go:https://www.newyorkupstate.com/news/201 ... _york.html
That’s just from a four month period in 2016 in NY State.

All SJW public policy is grounded on the false concept that humans are, if not inherently good by nature, then at least tabula rasa thus ever malleable/redeemable. The current rage among the far left now is 'restorative justice', whereby criminals, even sadistic rapists and murderers, meet with their victims (or surviving family members), listen to how much their crime hurt them, and PAFF! experience a damascene moment, renounce crime, and do community service like picking litter as recompense. It's completely batshit crazy.